African Quilt : 24 Modern African Stories (9781101617441)

by Solomon, Barbara H. (EDT); Rampone, W. Reginald, Jr. (EDT)

  So it was. After that first breakdown, Matilda began to feel that her punishment was not too severe, considering the heinousness of the crime. She tried to put a joke into it, but by slow, unconscious degrees, the strain nibbled at her. Philemon did not harass her much more, so long as the ritual with the confounded suit was conscientiously followed.

  Only once, he got one of his malevolent brainwaves. He got it into his head that “our visitor” needed an outing. Accordingly the suit was taken to the dry cleaners during the week, and, come Sunday, they had to take it out for a walk. Both Philemon and Matilda dressed for the occasion. Matilda had to carry the suit on its hanger over her back and the three of them strolled leisurely along Ray Street. They passed the church crowd in front of the famous Anglican Mission of Christ the King. Though the worshippers saw nothing unusual in them, Matilda felt, searing through her, red-hot needles of embarrassment, and every needle-point was a public eye piercing into her degradation.

  But Philemon walked casually on. He led her down Ray Street and turned into Main Road. He stopped often to look into shop windows or to greet a friend passing by. They went up Toby Street, turned into Edward Road, and back home. To Philemon the outing was free of incident, but to Matilda it was one long, excruciating incident.

  At home, he grabbed a book on Abnormal Psychology, flung himself into a chair and calmly said to her, “Give the old chap a rest, will you, Tilly?”

  In the bedroom, Matilda said to herself that things could not go on like this. She thought of how she could bring the matter to a head with Philemon; have it out with him once and for all. But the memory of his face, that first day she had forgotten to entertain the suit, stayed her. She thought of running away, but where to? Home? What could she tell her old-fashioned mother had happened between Philemon and her? All right, run away clean then. She thought of many young married girls who were divorcees now, who had won their freedom.

  What had happened to Staff Nurse Kakile? The woman drank heavily now, and when she got drunk, the boys of Sophiatown passed her around and called her the Cesspot.

  Matilda shuddered.

  An idea struck her. There were still decent, married women around Sophiatown. She remembered how after the private schools had been forced to close with the advent of Bantu Education, Father Harringay of the Anglican Mission had organised Cultural Clubs. One, she seemed to remember, was for married women. If only she could lose herself in some cultural activity, find absolution for her conscience in some doing good; that would blur her blasted home life, would restore her self-respect. After all, Philemon had not broadcast her disgrace abroad . . . nobody knew; not one of Sophiatown’s slander-mongers suspected how vulnerable she was. She must go and see Mrs. Montjane about joining a Cultural Club. She must ask Philemon now if she might . . . she must ask him nicely.

  She got up and walked into the other room where Philemon was reading quietly. She dreaded disturbing him, did not know how to begin talking to him . . . they had talked so little for so long. She went and stood in front of him, looking silently upon his deep concentration. Presently, he looked up with a frown on his face.

  Then she dared, “Phil, I’d like to join one of those Cultural Clubs for married women. Would you mind?”

  He wrinkled his nose and rubbed it between thumb and index finger as he considered the request. But he had caught the note of anxiety in her voice and thought he knew what it meant.

  “Mmmm,” he said, nodding. “I think that’s a good idea. You can’t be moping around all day. Yes, you may, Tilly.” Then he returned to his book.

  The Cultural Club idea was wonderful. She found women like herself, with time (if not with tragedy) on their hands, engaged in wholesome, refreshing activities. The atmosphere was cheerful and cathartic. They learned things and they did things. They organised fêtes, bazaars, youth activities, sport, music, self-help and community projects. She got involved in committees, meetings, debates, conferences. It was for her a whole new venture into humancraft, and her personality blossomed. Philemon gave her all the rein she wanted.

  Now, abiding by that silly ritual at home seemed a little thing . . . a very little thing . . .

  Then one day she decided to organise a little party for her friends and their husbands. Philemon was very decent about it. He said it was all right. He even gave her extra money for it. Of course, she knew nothing of the strain he himself suffered from his mode of castigation.

  There was a week of hectic preparation. Philemon stepped out of its cluttering way as best he could. So many things seemed to be taking place simultaneously. New dresses were made. Cakes were baked; three different orders of meat prepared; beef for the uninvited chancers; mutton for the normal guests; turkey and chicken for the inner pith of the club’s core. To Philemon, it looked as if Matilda planned to feed the multitude on the Mount with no aid of miracles.

  On the Sunday of the party, Philemon saw Matilda’s guests. He was surprised by the handsome grace with which she received them. There was a long table with enticing foods and flowers and serviettes. Matilda placed all her guests round the table, and the party was ready to begin in the mock-formal township fashion. Outside a steady rumble of conversation went on where the human odds and ends of every Sophiatown party had their “share.”

  Matilda caught the curious look on Philemon’s face. He tried to disguise his edict when he said, “Er . . . the guest of honour.”

  But Matilda took a chance. She begged, “Just this once, Phil.”

  He became livid. “Matilda!” he shouted, “Get our visitor!” Then with incisive sarcasm, “Or are you ashamed of him?”

  She went ash-grey; but there was nothing for it but to fetch her albatross. She came back and squeezed a chair into some corner, and placed the suit on it. Then she slowly placed a plate of food before it. For a while the guests were dumbfounded. Then curiosity flooded in. They talked at the same time. “What’s the idea, Philemon?” . . . “Why must she serve a suit?” . . . “What’s happening?” Some just giggled in a silly way. Philemon carelessly swung his head towards Matilda. “You better ask my wife. She knows the fellow best.”

  All interest beamed upon poor Matilda. For a moment she could not speak, all enveloped in misery. Then she said, unconvincingly, “It’s just a game that my husband and I play at mealtime.” They roared with laughter. Philemon let her get away with it.

  The party went on, and every time Philemon’s glare sent Matilda scurrying to serve the suit each course; the guests were no-end amused by the persistent mock-seriousness with which this husband and wife played out their little game. Only, to Matilda, it was no joke; it was a hot poker down her throat. After the party, Philemon went off with one of the guests who had promised to show him a joint “that sells genuine stuff, boy, genuine stuff.”

  Reeling drunk, late that sabbath, he crashed through his kitchen door, onwards to his bedroom. Then he saw her.

  They have a way of saying in the argot of Sophiatown, “Cook out of the head!” signifying that someone was impacted with such violent shock that whatever whiffs of alcohol still wandered through his head were instantaneously evaporated and the man stood sober before stark reality.

  There she lay, curled, as if just before she died she begged for a little love, implored some implacable lover to cuddle her a little . . . just this once . . . just this once more.

  In screwish anguish, Philemon cried, “Tilly!”

  NGUGI WA THIONG’O

  Thiong’o was born James Thiong’o in Limuru, Kenya, in 1938; he changed his name in 1977 because of its associations with Christianity and colonial oppression. He was educated at Makerere University and the University of Leeds, returning to Kenya to teach at the University of Nairobi, where he convinced the administration to transform its Department of English into the Department of African Languages and Literature. Thiong’o was both critical of British rule in Kenya and
disappointed in the new black ruling class after Kenya gained its independence, and his fiction has frequently depicted ordinary Kenyans juxtaposed against corrupt politicians and greedy entrepreneurs. His first novel, Weep Not, Child (1964), described how the Mau Mau rebellion against the British administration in the 1950s affected the lives of a young boy and his family. He is also the author of plays, short stories, and copious nonfiction, most notably Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature (1986).

  Minutes of Glory

  (1975)

  Her name was Wanjiru. But she liked better her Christian one, Beatrice. It sounded more pure and more beautiful. Not that she was ugly; but she could not be called beautiful either. Her body, dark and full fleshed, had the form, yes, but it was as if it waited to be filled by the spirit. She worked in beer halls where sons of women came to drown their inner lives in beer cans and froth. Nobody seemed to notice her. Except, perhaps, when a proprietor or an impatient customer called out her name, Beatrice; then other customers would raise their heads briefly, a few seconds, as if to behold the bearer of such a beautiful name, but not finding anybody there, they would resume their drinking, their ribald jokes, their laughter and play with the other serving girls. She was like a wounded bird in flight: a forced landing now and then but nevertheless wobbling from place to place so that she would variously be found in Alaska, Paradise, The Modern, Thome and other beer halls all over Limuru. Sometimes it was because an irate proprietor found she was not attracting enough customers; he would sack her without notice and without a salary. She would wobble to the next bar. But sometimes she was simply tired of nesting in one place, a daily witness of familiar scenes; girls even more decidedly ugly than she were fought over by numerous claimants at closing time. What do they have that I don’t have? she would ask herself, depressed. She longed for a bar-kingdom where she would be at least one of the rulers, where petitioners would bring their gifts of beer, frustrated smiles and often curses that hid more lust and love than hate.

  She left Limuru town proper and tried the mushrooming townlets around. She worked at Ngarariga, Kamiritho, Rironi and even Tiekunu and everywhere the story was the same. Oh yes, occasionally she would get a client; but none cared for her as she would have liked, none really wanted her enough to fight over her. She was always a hard-up customer’s last resort. No make-believe even, not for her that sweet pretence that men indulged in after their fifth bottle of Tusker. The following night or during a payday, the same client would pretend not to know her; he would be trying his money-power over girls who already had more than a fair share of admirers.

  She resented this. She saw in every girl a rival and adopted a sullen attitude. Nyaguthii especially was the thorn that always pricked her wounded flesh. Nyaguthii, arrogant and aloof, but men always in her courtyard; Nyaguthii, fighting with men, and to her they would bring propitiating gifts which she accepted as of right. Nyaguthii could look bored, impatient or downright contemptuous and still men would cling to her as if they enjoyed being whipped with biting words, curled lips and the indifferent eyes of a free woman. Nyaguthii was also a bird in flight, never really able to settle in one place, but in her case it was because she hungered for change and excitement: new faces and new territories for her conquest. Beatrice resented her very shadow. She saw in her the girl she would have liked to be, a girl who was both totally immersed in and yet completely above the underworld of bar violence and sex. Wherever Beatrice went the long shadow of Nyaguthii would sooner or later follow her.

  She fled Limuru for Ilmorog in Chiri District. Ilmorog had once been a ghost village, but had been resurrected to life by that legendary woman, Nyang’endo, to whom every pop group had paid their tribute. It was of her that the young dancing Muthuu and Muchun g’ wa sang:

  When I left Nairobi for Ilmorog

  Never did I know

  I would bear this wonder-child mine

  Nyang’endo.

  As a result, Ilmorog was always seen as a town of hope where the weary and the downtrodden would find their rest and fresh water. But again Nyaguthii followed her.

  She found that Ilmorog, despite the legend, despite the songs and dances, was not different from Limuru. She tried various tricks. Clothes? But even here she never earned enough to buy herself glittering robes. What was seventy-five shillings a month without house allowance, posho, without salaried boyfriends? By that time Ambi had reached Ilmorog and Beatrice thought that this would be the answer. Had she not, in Limuru, seen girls blacker than herself transformed overnight from ugly sins into white stars by a touch of skin-lightening creams? And men would ogle them, would even talk with exaggerated pride of their newborn girlfriends. Men were strange creatures, Beatrice thought in moments of searching analysis. They talked heatedly against Ambi, Butone, Firesnow, Moonsnow, wigs, straightened hair, but they always went for a girl with an Ambi-lightened skin and head covered with a wig made in imitation of European or Indian hair. Beatrice never tried to find the root cause of this black self-hatred; she simply accepted the contradiction and applied herself to Ambi with a vengeance. She had to rub out her black shame. But even Ambi she could not afford in abundance; she could only apply it to her face and to her arms so that her legs and her neck retained their blackness. Besides there were parts of her face she could not readily reach—behind the ears and above the eyelashes, for instance—and these were a constant source of shame and irritation to her Ambi-self.

  She would always remember this Ambi period as one of her deepest humiliation before her later minutes of glory. She worked in Ilmorog Starlight Bar and Lodging. Nyaguthii, with her bangled hands, her huge earrings, served behind the counter. The owner was a good Christian soul who regularly went to church and paid all his dues to Harambee projects. Potbelly. Grey hairs. Soft-spoken. A respectable family man, well-known in Ilmorog. Hardworking even, for he would not leave the bar until the closing hours, or more precisely, until Nyaguthii left. He had no eyes for any other girl; he hung around her, and surreptitiously brought her gifts of clothes without receiving gratitude in kind. Only the promise. Only the hope for tomorrow. Other girls he gave eighty shillings a month. Nyaguthii had a room to herself. Nyaguthii woke up whenever she liked to take the stock. But Beatrice and the other girls had to wake up at five or so, make tea for the lodgers, clean up the bar and wash dishes and glasses. Then they would hang around the bar in shifts until two o’clock when they would go for a small break. At five o’clock they had to be in again, ready for customers whom they would now serve with frothy beers and smiles until twelve o’clock or for as long as there were customers thirsty for more Tuskers and Pilsners. What often galled Beatrice, although in her case it did not matter one way or another, was the owner’s insistence that the girls should sleep in Starlight. They would otherwise be late for work, he said. But what he really wanted was for the girls to use their bodies to attract more lodgers in Starlight. Most of the girls, led by Nyaguthii, defied the rule and bribed the watchman to let them out and in. They wanted to meet their regular or one-night boyfriends in places where they would be free and where they would be treated as not just barmaids. Beatrice always slept in. Her occasional one-night patrons wanted to spend the minimum. Came a night when the owner, refused by Nyaguthii, approached her. He started by finding fault with her work; he called her names, then as suddenly he started praising her, although in a grudging, almost contemptuous manner. He grabbed her, struggled with her, potbelly, grey hairs and everything. Beatrice felt an unusual revulsion for the man. She could not, she would not bring herself to accept that which had so recently been cast aside by Nyaguthii. My God, she wept inside, what does Nyaguthii have that I don’t have? The man now humiliated himself before her. He implored. He promised her gifts. But she would not yield. That night she too defied the rule. She jumped through a window; she sought a bed in another bar and only came back at six. The proprietor called her in front of all the others and dismissed her. But
Beatrice was rather surprised at herself.

  She stayed a month without a job. She lived from room to room at the capricious mercy of the other girls. She did not have the heart to leave Ilmorog and start all over again in a new town. The wound hurt. She was tired of wandering. She stopped using Ambi. No money. She looked at herself in the mirror. She had so aged, hardly a year after she had fallen from grace. Why then was she scrupulous, she would ask herself. But somehow she had a horror of soliciting lovers or directly bartering her body for hard cash. What she wanted was decent work and a man or several men who cared for her. Perhaps she took that need for a man, for a home and for a child with her to bed. Perhaps it was this genuine need that scared off men who wanted other things from barmaids. She wept late at nights and remembered home. At such moments, her mother’s village in Nyeri seemed the sweetest place on God’s earth. She would invest the life of her peasant mother and father with romantic illusions of immeasurable peace and harmony. She longed to go back home to see them. But how could she go back with empty hands? In any case the place was now a distant landscape in the memory. Her life was here in the bar among this crowd of lost strangers. Fallen from grace, fallen from grace. She was part of a generation which would never again be one with the soil, the crops, the wind and the moon. Not for them that whispering in dark hedges, not for her that dance and lovemaking under the glare of the moon, with the hills of TumuTumu rising to touch the sky. She remembered that girl from her home village who, despite a life of apparent glamour being the kept mistress of one rich man after another in Limuru, had gassed herself to death. This generation was not awed by the mystery of death, just as it was callous to the mystery of life; for how many unmarried mothers had thrown their babies into latrines rather than lose that glamour? The girl’s death became the subject of jokes. She had gone metric—without pains, they said. Thereafter, for a week, Beatrice thought of going metric. But she could not bring herself to do it.